EDITOR'S NOTE: This trial is expected to last for several weeks. Reporter Jane Sims is tweeting live from court. Please scroll down to the bottom of the story to see today's live coverage.

The jury had been warned that the photographs of baby Ryker Daponte-Michaud would be difficult to see.

After the terrible images of the 18-month-old toddler from Strathroy, dead from sheer neglect, were reviewed, they were certainly difficult to forget.

But there in the clinical, staid format of a criminal trial, the jury in the hushed courtroom saw images of the little boy in the green, blue and white sleeper on the autopsy table following his death on May 21, 2014.

Once the sleeper had been removed, the extent of his injuries were clear and troubling — red, blistering burns from his waist to almost his knees, covering his genitalia, buttocks and some of his back.

His mother, Amanda Dumont, 30, and her partner, Scott Bakker, 27, have pleaded not guilty in the Superior Court of Justice to a joint charge of criminal negligence causing death and separate charges of failing to provide the necessaries of life.

Dumont shook and sobbed as the photos were shown Tuesday. Bakker, from his place in a different compartment of the long prisoner’s box, had his arms crossed, taking defiant glances at the video screen, then over to Dumont.

Assistant Crown attorney Elizabeth Maguire told the jury in her opening address that it’s believed the massive burns were caused by a scalding hot cup of instant coffee at least three days before his death on the Victoria Day long weekend. He was never taken for any medical treatment, the Crown contends.

Ryker Daponte-Michaud

The jury saw a soiled orange toddler’s T-shirt, a jar of Nescafe instant coffee found in the baby’s room, a soiled change pad and mattress, all sent to the Centre for Forensic Sciences for testing.

Also shown to the jury were autopsy photos of injuries around his right eye and over his left, plus others on his left arm and hand. All the injuries will be discussed at length when the pathologist testifies.

The other shocker that will have to be explained is the methamphetamine found in Ryker’s urine. OPP Const. Mark Johnson, one of the identification officers, testified that he sent a syringe to be tested for the drug. The syringe and other drug paraphernalia was in a bag of garbage thrown over the townhouse’s back fence.

Johnson said he wanted the tests done after the disturbing discovery at the baby’s autopsy. The results of those tests will be discussed later in the trial.

Just as the initial shock of the autopsy photos had waned from the morning session, the jury spent part of the afternoon looking at crime scene photos that showed Baby Ryker’s lifeless body on the floor of the kitchen in the cluttered home.

The injuries were discussed by Strathroy-Caradoc police Const. David Vieira, who was the first identification officer on the scene and took the photos on the day the toddler died.

Vieira took more than 100 photos at the house and recalled an odour coming from the main floor bedroom where Ryker had slept.

The smell was “similar to the odour of a cat litter box, but I don’t recall seeing it,” he said.

“I didn’t know what the smell was. But it was obvious.”

What started to emerge on the second day of the trial is where the defences are heading.

Bakker’s lawyers spent much of their cross-examinations of police officers trying to establish that perhaps Bakker wasn’t even living at the townhouse on Penny Lane. The lawyers also tried to establish that he was shaken by Ryker’s death.

While cross-examining Vieira, Bakker’s co-defence lawyer Greg Leslie pointed out that the police officer fingerprinted Bakker after his arrest on May 24, 2014. Vieira agreed with Leslie that Bakker “was emotional and he started crying.”

But Dumont’s defence lawyer Ken Marley went to Vieira’s notes that documented Bakker yelling at Dumont from his cell to hers in the Strathroy-Caradoc police headquarters just before he was fingerprinted.

Vieira agreed that Bakker cried and whispered to him during the procedure. Once finished and after he put Bakker back in his cell, Vieira noted, “I don’t know if Scott was playing me or not.”

Before the jury was dismissed for the day, Maguire had Dumont’s Lambton College transcripts put into evidence. She graduated in 2012 with a personal support worker diploma and was on the dean’s list.